The Pittsburgh Tatler: There’s a diabolically funny moment in the first act of Collaborators: Josef Stalin (played with demonic relish by Martin Giles), having summoned playwright Mikhail Bulgakov (Tony Bingham) to his secret office to work on a play glorifying Stalin’s life, shoos Bulgakov away from the typewriter and starts merrily pounding away at the keys. The moment is funny because we don’t expect a figure like Stalin to find such joy in writing a play; the moment is diabolical because it encourages us to see one of history’s most monstrous autocrats as human, likable, and perhaps even a little bit charming.
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